b e h n d i n g

Re-write this paragraph (using sensory detail, active voice, prose rhythms, avoiding filtering, linking verbs, cliches, adverbs).  Basically showing the reader rather than telling them.

Original paragraph:

Marie was shocked to discover his face on the front of the newspaper under the headline: SUSPECT IN BANK ROBBERY.  At first she was not sure it was him – he seemed like the same person she had met that morning, but she wondered if it could be true.  The man on the paper had dark hair, dark eyes, a strong brow, and a smile that stretched from ear to ear.  She asked herself, could that sweet guy at the café actually be a bank robber?  Rapidly she reached for the paper, but it was caught by a gust of wind and was yanked away.  She felt exhilarated and confused, and suddenly regretted giving him her phone number.

Revised:

Marie stepped off the uptown M87 and froze.  That was him, beneath the bold black print screaming “SUSPECT IN BANK ROBBERY”.  Or was it?  She squinted as she strained to recall their chance encounter that morning at the dingy corner café: how his hair matched the expresso grounds, how his brow loomed over those soft caramel eyes, how his smile made her smile as she threw in a cinnamon scone on the house.  No it couldn’t be—but it was.  She knelt down to grab the paper just as the wind snatched it away and heaved it across the highway.  She did not get up.  Her heart hammered away and her fingers tingled with regret.

[i actually "published" this post before i could revise/expand it.  but now that i'm reading it again, i don't know if i want to change it.  the title refers to the fact that what may seem innocuous, simply enjoying others' company, may not actually be in the spiritual realm.]

yesterday we had another house dinner and it was a blast.  goulash?  and chickpea stew.  and wine and beer and brownies.  the goulash and brownies both courtesy of betty crocker, our cultural foremother whether we like it or not.

i was reminded of the chapter in c.s. lewis’ screwtape letters when he talks about jokes and wit.  how things seem funnier when people are in a certain mode, more receptive to joy, laughter, and intimacy.  i’m coming to realize that with whatever i am reading, you can usually find parallels or intersections with your own life.

Dots connecting — short story I’m reading for class,  visited by a book on science fiction I’m getting ready for editing.

for the past few monday nights, my post-work routine has been as follows: come home, jump in the shower, muster something for dinner, settle myself in front of my computer, give a cursory glance at my email, and log on to hulu to watch the bachelor.  one and a half hours of pure, mindless, detached entertainment.  i don’t know what it is about me and bad tv but there is an undeniable natural attraction.  both the bachelor and jersey shore portray realities so remote to me that i don’t need to worry about investing myself emotionally or wonder what i would do in those situations.  and while of course i form opinions about the players and what happens, i talk about them not so much as “reality shows” as alternate universes.  snooki’s a real person?  please.

for those who choose to spend their monday nights more wisely than me, this season’s bachelor is jake, a sexy-sweet pilot from texas who was on last season’s bachelorette before getting canned.  he frustrated me in the first episode when he passed on the girl who was the obvious choice, a throaty brunette officer-type who professed to not knowing how to dress because all she ever wore was her uniform.  and yet managed to look stunning at the rose ceremony, where she exuded such grace and a quiet, confident, knowing smile.  that girl screamed character, well as much character as one can scream on this show, and i knew jake’s judgment was flawed when he didn’t pick her.  his shoddy judgment is confirmed every time he hands a rose to vienna, and i’m not convinced he’s doing it because the producers are telling him to.  kicking off ella already?  seriously?  to his credit, he did say, “this is the first of many decisions no one will understand,” or something emo like that.

I’m facing a fact I couldn’t swallow in college, that I am not a good poker player. I believe I have the poker face down, not that it’s something I’ve worked to attain but rather that it’s a natural byproduct of my perpetually aloof appearance. I am also patient and disciplined enough to play only hands worth playing, to avert hasty calls, and to not let my pride fool me into making bad decisions. All this most of the time, which I think is usually enough. I am not aggressive but do not think this is a requisite for being a strong, consistently strong, poker player.

But I am too economical, having been raised to think I was poor even as we, objectively and statistically, were positioned squarely in the middle of the pack. Perhaps that’s what my parents truly believed, or couldn’t get over, the fact that they had been.  I don’t have the loose hand that’s necessary for one to cultivate the skills for playing poker, the kind of blase about losing money in the beginning that I think is a precursor to being good.  Or I’m unable to see the money in as an investment that will pay itself off eventually.  Part of why I kept playing in college was b/c I so badly wanted to win back the money I had already lost.  But at a certain point one has to question the logic of tossing money into a seeming black hole, when there’s little indication of when that black hole will turn into a treasure chest.  Second and related, I’m conservative by nature, as in risk-averse.  So my sense of the risk-reward curve is skewed, improperly designed for poker playing, to my misfortune.  I am always on edge, even with the best hands, afraid that I’ll catch a bad break and that will be the end of me.  And I’ve caught enough and seen enough to know it happens more than the odds predict, especially when you’re on the losing end.  Third, I distinctly lack any killer instinct.  It’s one thing to cripple an opponent, another to devastate and wipe him out completely and I never feel good about doing the latter.  There’s always a twinge of guilt or reserve or a moment after when i bite my lips and say sorry, in my head.  For poker to be a profitable enterprise I think you need to delight in taking people down, or at least remain indifferent to doing it.  Surely that’s developed over time, but some people also take longer than others.  If you avoid putting yourself in the losing person’s shoes I would think the issue is averted.  Is that worth doing?

Yesterday i went snowboarding with my friend T and her dragon boating team.  the last time i hit the slopes was two years ago, my last winter at williams.  after arriving at the mountain we headed straight for the bunny slope, where people were transported to the top via a lethargic escalator that could handily be outwalked.  seriously, i chose to walk up for my second run and outpaced people on the escalator.  My two warm-up runs down that little hill did me a lot of good, shaking the stiffness and awkwardness out of my body.  A couple spills also reminded me that I had not gotten younger since my last time out, a reminder I did not need.  But I got some nice runs in throughout the day, concentrating on keeping myself balanced, relaxed, and as technically sound as I knew how to be.  It’s often said that “the game slows down” as you improve, and I perceived something of that over the few hours I spent in action yesterday.  The ground definitely seemed to move faster in the morning than in the afternoon, the same trail experienced as significantly longer at the end of the day than at the beginning, because of all the extra thinking I could get in when I wasn’t focused solely on staying upright.  Also, I’d just like to point out the odd sensation of being out in the cold and sweating.

Around 4pm I was heading up the chair lift for my final ride of the day when the night lights turned on.  The drab, grey dusk yielded to a true winter wonderland –  who knew, that nondescript white stuff on the ground could really sparkle!  The lights, fairies my friend called them (I prefer fireflies), remind me now of the last scene from The Giver, when Jonas discovers the city of lights, radiating hope, even as it signifies that he may in fact be dead.

I had an eventful long weekend, full of mahjong, kimchi pancakes (in the air, on the ground, in my stomach), and reflection.  I am going to my first bikram yoga class tomorrow (one of my new housemates, a yoga instructor with no visible body fat, won me over), and while I am sore as hell from snowboarding, the extra day off has restored some energy to my body and peace to my spirit.

[this blog post was started on jan 6 2010.  like many things related to this blog, it was left to fester until now.]

behnding has played second fiddle practically since her inception, and here i am in the same position i was last year, neglecting my precious creation out of laziness, busyness, indifference. yes, she is a she, i am sure of that like i am sure my bike is a she (her name is stella).  having accepted my initial failure to execute the concept driving behnding, i am now searching for ways to fully realize her potential.  i think i am not alone in my failure to keep a blog going, as how many people can say to themselves regularly, i have no time but i must write?  which is what you must be able to say to succeed in this business.

i think my biggest problem was that the concept of behnding floated away from me.  i thought naively that i could sustain the blog by writing whatever was on my mind but i was wrong.  inspiration alone did not generate enough momentum to continue the blogging after the novelty of it withered, an insufficient life source.  it has to do with a general fault of mine, speaking and thinking too much in abstract terms, somewhere up there.  i am learning that i can really only write through the events, books, people that I experience.  seeing abstraction as an extension of the concrete, not the other way around.  believing that fully experiencing something means writing about it.  i dream of reaching the point where i must behnd, that there is no such thing as the negative.

the other issue inhibiting behnding’s full-fledged emergence is that i keep a journal on paper, which is just more handy for writing spontaneously.  I’m still trying to figure out how to consolidate the two, or define different objectives for them, or somehow resolve their co-existence.  i imagine either the hard journal will become scrap paper and behnding the more refined writing product, or that they will serve as forums for different, separate parts of my life (that which I am willing to publicize and that I am not?).  are those separate?

Some words conjure up very strong mental associations.  The phrase pots and pans makes me think of my mom and the way she always jumbles up the vowels and says pats and pons.  The word fester reminds me of this poem, which I first encountered in middle school.  I can’t remember what I learned about it but I have always remembered it, which is no small feat for me when it comes to poetry.

What happens to a dream deferred? by Langston Hughes

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

One slow afternoon during the break, I think it was the day after new year’s, I went to see It’s Complicated with my mom and a (female) family friend. There was actually a decent audience on hand, composed overwhelmingly of middle-aged women who, by their school girl giggles and murmurs of approval, were clearly charmed by one John Krasinski. I was distracted by something about Steve Martin’s face that made me think he wasn’t quite right for the part. The constant close ups on him made me cringe (he is not what i would consider handsome) and my reservations for him physically, mismatched against his likable if stereotypical character, made me feel kind of awkward. As did Alec Baldwin’s camera-hog of a gut, which looked so taut it could make a dime bounce. OK now I am mean.

But overall the movie was entertaining. The girlfriend and children united in their misery scenes oozed with cheesiness but I generally find little fault with Meryl Streep. She glowed, and the fact that she had my dream job and could whip up chocolate croissants from scratch definitely swung things in her, and the movie’s, favor. In fact, some gratuitous food porn never hurts, which this movie definitely optimized with those bakery scenes.

The situation around which the plot revolved seemed pretty straightforward to me, but what do I know. I didn’t really intend on blogging about the movie but a quote from Steinbeck triggered my memory and I think it is more apropos than I want to admit.

“When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you’ve got two new people. Maybe that means — hell, it’s complicated.”
- Winter of Our Discontent

To wrap the noose around this brief discussion I present one of the beloved, age-defining songs of my high school years, one that lays out a different sort of complicated, complications of a different place, time, and register, but no less relevant I imagine.  I know this one will take you back.

this post would have been titled “the morning after” had i actually woken up before noon. “the afternoon after” just doesn’t have the familiar ring, the same smooth roll off one’s tongue.  it sounds pretty awkward, actually; chunky and awkward.  thanksgiving yesterday was stressful.  after picking up some last minute ingredients, we headed out to brooklyn in the morning, where we proceeded to pick up some more last minute ingredients.  i started cooking around noon and didn’t stop until the bulk of people started arriving around 4.  The turkey was celebratorily broken down about a half hour later, to the delight and relief of everyone i think, not least myself.  after multiple interwoven rounds of dinner and dessert, with several lashings of tension, laughter, and the usual accoutrements of family gatherings throughout, we faced an excess of scorned leftovers and the equally scorned burden of cleaning up.  the fat lady having sang, we packed up and arrived home around midnight, when i quickly bought a tv on black friday sale for my parents, assisted by some well-meaning friends and a bottle of fruity cabernet, a gift from my father who got it from my uncle who works in a Chinese restaurant, the kind that frequently hosts wedding banquets and consequently assumes the less than onerous task of dispensing with unused bottles of wine.  thusly, thankfully, was my thanksgiving day 2009 concluded.

Looking forward to going home for Thanksgiving.  As neurotic and annoying as family can be, the thought of returning home undeniably evokes the same feelings as does a warm fuzzy teddy bear.  It’s so comforting to see the dinky old TV I grew up watching, the same bureau with the stickers I stuck on as a kid still on the handles, the blue bathroom rugs that guarded one’s feet from the hard tile floor.  Even if home were to move, I’m confident I’d still encounter fond memories of the old in the new.  It’s in the familiar way people speak, the faces and quibbles and gestures that I go back to as well, that reflect childhood just as the physical space I’ll soon re-enter.  I’m reading Pamuk’s Istanbul, so maybe that’s why childhood is on my mind.  He’s a master of specificity, of orientation and recollection.  He makes me wish I had more imagination and a better memory, or just more mental capacity in general.  Not a bitter wishfulness but an appreciative one that perceives what’s beyond one’s power.  I don’t think you need have to be able to call forth the sun in order to see beauty in the sun rise or to yearn for it in its absence or obscurity.  Perhaps I am approaching a distinction between admiration and envy?

so to be a good writer youre supposed to write every day, to make it a habit, just something you do like ea ting or sleeping.  it should be a natural act, not like forcing a smile for someone you dont like or know.  it should be like breathing, right?  im asking the invisible writer to whom this is written.  but if stream of consciousness isnt your style how do you translate this free form practice into writing proper?  how do you develop techniques of word choice or structure if you simply spew out whatever comes to mind?  rhetorical questions are a defense mechanism what do they accomplish, theres another rhetorical question.

today i attended a web du bois lecture at harvard.  the speaker was gayatri spivak and i hardly understood a full sentence she spoke.  throwing around the big words like candy from a pinata, the kind of candy that cracks your teeth if youre not careful.  the title of the talk was du bois and the general strike but i never did find out what the general strike was.  all i know was it happened in 1905 and im not even positively sure that thats true.  she spoke like she had some syndrome where she couldnt stop elongating her sentences until she changed the subject altogether.  she had notes but she just kept riffing, maybe it nerves but shes going to be 68 in 3 months so obviously it was not her first time lecturing to a room of influential academics and myself.  the great thing was she was wearing leg warmers and sneakers at the podium b/c she was late coming in for the lecture, having missed the first train she was supposed to take.  and her hairstyle was similar to skip gates’, close-cropped revealing a small well-formed head.  i cant accurately describe her talk, i began an attempt but fell into a rut a half-sentence in.  i did like what she said about du bois being a counterintuitive thinker the same as kant and frederick douglass and how we cant really expect to use reason to understand him or get the most out of his teachings.  she said she hoped we all dream at night b/c thats when we escape the totalitarian regime of reason, that incurable hangover from the enlightenment.  also there was good brie during the reception, which put me in a forgiving mood.

i have been reading on the road to decompress after finishing portrait of a lady.  its entertaining but not edifying. thats not a complaint, its not like everything i read must teach me something but i dont identify with the beat generation mode of life i have the baggage of an immigrant and bourgeois past so sue me if i dont want to frolic with my pants down and eat apple pie and ice cream at gas stations and rest stops across the country.  im almost done with the book thank goodness because im a serious person and wont apologize for that.  im not saying the book is trivial, just that it doesnt concern me.